Day 4 – Day 10

July 2, 2013

Let’s talk about pain. During the first ten days after my operation my hand hurt in a variety of ways. First of all the cast restricted my wrist and hand. So there were times where it would swell up and it would feel like King Kong was gripping my wrist. It was a claustrophobic feeling, much like being in a straitjacket. I wanted to move my wrist, stretch my fingers or just do something but I was restricted.

If I stayed up too much and walked around outside, or went in the car my wrist would start to hurt more and it felt like it was swelling up. So I found myself laying in bed with my hand up on two pillows more often than not. Luckily I had on-demand cable and I breezed through many television series and episodes that I had never seen before. However after a week I began to scramble for things to watch.

I found it difficult to be comfortable since I always had some sort of pain in my wrist and hand. Sometimes it was a swelling feeling like your wrist is about to explode and other times it was more specific like a nail in your hand. It also would feel like your wrist was bruised and that just resting it on a pillow would hurt.

The pain was not intolerable but it certainly was not pleasant. It made it very difficult to focus on things like work. Since I had stopped taking the Percocet all I could do was take Tylenol and Advil every four hours.

I would think that if you did not have diverticulosis that you could take more of the Percocet and possibly be more comfortable providing you take care on what you eat and that you take stool softener’s regularly.

So for the first seven days my life was spent mostly in bed with little trips outside. However, since it was summer and very humid and hot going outside cause my wrist to swell.

Finally, I could not use my fingers at all even though they were free from the cast. they were lifeless since I could not move them other than a little wiggle. Because the finger’s movement and strength goes through the wrist, trying to move your fingers would cause pain in the wrist so they just sat there.

When I was up I would keep my arm in a sling. My wife had taken a week off to help me.

All I could say at this point is that I hope it works and I will be on my Vespa sooner than later.